New CNN Special on Christian Nationalism

CNN reports:

The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, a six-time Emmy® Award-winning CNN Original, returns with “The Rise of Christian Nationalism” with CNN Anchor and Chief Investigative Correspondent Pamela Brown premiering Sunday, February 22 at 8pm ET/PT. The hour will stream on demand the next day for subscribers of CNN’s streaming offering.

In this hour, Brown examines the growing influence of Christian nationalism, an ideology rooted in the belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that its laws and institutions should reflect Christian values.

Good. It defines the term. It is not an attempt to radically change American government, but to affirm its history.

A previous CNN story:

Many Trump administration actions have blurred the lines between church and state. In the days before Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University, Trump delivered a speech at the privately funded Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, where he promised to protect prayer in public schools through forthcoming guidance from the Department of Education.

“To have a great nation, you have to have religion,” Trump said. “I believe that so strongly. There has to be something after we go through all of this — and that something is God.”

A federal court just upheld a Louisiana law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in the schools.

Plaintiffs present no historical evidence that remotely suggests that our Founders would have regarded a passive display of the Ten Commandments as an impermissible “establishment of religion.” ...

Plaintiffs present no historical evidence that remotely suggests that our Founders would have regarded a passive display of the Ten Commandments as an impermissible “establishment of religion.” U.S. Const. amend I. See, e.g., Kennedy, 597 U.S. at 537 & n.5 (noting the “hallmarks of religious establishments the framers sought to prohibit when they adopted the First Amendment”) (citing, inter alia, Shurtleff v. City of Boston, 596 U.S. 243, 285–86 (2022) (Gorsuch, J., concurring)). To the contrary, our Nation’s history proves precisely the opposite.

Our Nation’s Founders didn’t just permit religion in education — they presumed that there would be religion in education. Indeed, our Founders firmly believed that our Constitution wouldn’t work without a religious people.

John Adams famously observed that “[o]ur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams, Letter to the Massachusetts Militia (Oct. 11, 1798). John Jay similarly wrote that “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people, . . . professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government.” The Federalist No. 2, at 9 (John Jay) (J. Cooke ed. 1961). The Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, contained in the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, proclaimed that “the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality.” Mass. Const. pt. I, art. III.

Given the centrality of religion in our Founders’ conception of good citizenship, it’s not surprising that religion was a cornerstone of American education from the beginning. The First Congress understood religious instruction to be a necessary element of education, providing in the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 that “[r]eligion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” 1 Stat. 50, 52 (1789).1

Those founders did not necessarily agree about their religious views, but they all believed in Christian education.